Category: Dream Bike

Dream Bikes: The Honda Dream

My Dad and I saw our first Honda ever in 1964 at a McDonald’s in East Brunswick, New Jersey.  It was a 150cc Dream, the smaller version of the bigger CA 77 305cc Dream.  I was 12 years old at the time.  In those days, it was a fun family outing to drive the 20 miles to Route 18 in New Jersey and have dinner at McDonald’s (that was the closest one), where hamburgers were 15 cents and the sign out front said they had sold over 4 million of the things. And the Honda we saw that day…Dad and I were both smitten by the baby Dream, with its whitewall tires, bright red paint, and the young clean cut guy riding it.  True to Honda’s tagline, he seemed to be one of the nicest people you could ever meet (although admittedly the bar wasn’t very high for nice people in New Jersey).

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Dad and I started looking into Hondas, and that included a trip to Cooper’s Cycle Ranch near Trenton.   Back then, it really was a ranch, or at least a farm of some sort…the showroom was Sherm Cooper’s old barn.  The little Hondas were cool, but the big ones (the 305s) were even cooler. A 305 was the biggest Honda available in the mid-1960s and Honda imported three 305cc motorcycles to America:  The CA 77 Dream, the CB 77 Super Hawk, and the CL 77 Scrambler.  The Dream was not designed to be an off road motorcycle (that was the CL 77 Scrambler’s domain) or a performance motorcycle (in the Honda world, that was the CB 77 Super Hawk).

Of the 305 twins,  It’s probably appropriate to discuss the CA 77 Dream first.  The Scrambler and the Super Hawk were intended to appeal to motorcycle enthusiasts; the Dream was a much less intimidating ticket in (into the motorcycle world, that is).  The typical Dream buyer was either someone stepping up from a smaller Honda, or someone who had not previously owned a motorcycle.

Honda first used the name “Dream” on its 1949 Model D (a single cylinder, 98cc two-stroke).  No one knows for sure where the Dream moniker came from, but legend has it that someone, upon first seeing the Model D, proclaimed it to look like a dream.  The C-series Dreams first emerged in Japan in 1957.  Pops Yoshimura built Honda engines with modified production parts that ran over 10,000 rpm for 18-hour endurance races, proving the basic design was robust.  Some say Honda based the engine design on an earlier NSU engine, but Honda unquestionably carried the engineering across the finish line.  Whatever.  When’s the last time you saw an NSU?  Another big plus was that Honda used horizontally split cases and that (along with vastly superior quality) essentially eliminated oil leaks.  The other guys (and in those days, that meant Harley and the Britbikes) had vertically split cases and they all leaked.  Honda motorcycles did not, and that was a big deal for a motorcycle in the 1960s.

There were several differences between the Dream and the other two Honda 305cc motorcycles.  The Super Hawk and the Scrambler had tubular steel frames and forks; the Dream used pressed steel for both its frame and fork.  The Dream was a single-carb motorcycle; the Super Hawk and the Scrambler had twin carbs.  The Dream had large steel valanced fenders, the other Hondas had more sporting abbreviated fenders.  The Dream was the only 305 that came from the Honda factory with whitewall tires.  The Dream had leading link front suspension; the Scrambler and the Super Hawk had telescopic forks.   The Dream used the Type II crankshaft (so did the Scrambler) with a 360-degree firing order (both pistons went up and down together, but the cylinders fired alternately).   The higher performance Super Hawk had the Type I, 180-degree crankshaft.  Like the Super Hawk, the Dream had electric starting (the Scrambler was kick start only).  The Dream came with a kickstarter, too, but why bother?  I mean, you weren’t going to be mistaken for Marlon Brando when you rode a Honda Dream.

The Dream’s 305cc engine had a single 23mm Keihin carb and it produced 23 horsepower at 7500 rpm (not that the rpm was of any interest; the Dream had no tachometer).  With its four-speed transmission and according to magazine test results, the Dream was good for between 80 and 100 mph (depending on motojournalist weight, I guess).  The Dream averaged around 50 mpg, although in those blissful days of $0.28/gallon gasoline, nobody really cared.   Honda Dreams came in white, black, red, or blue.  With 20/20 hindsight, I wish I had bought one in each color and parked them in the garage.  My favorites were black or white; those colors just seemed to work with the Dream’s whitewall tires.

Honda built the Dream until 1969.  The Dream retailed for $595 back in those days, but a shrewd negotiator could do better.

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Dreambikes: ’97 Suzuki TL1000S

The year was 1997 and the Ducati V-twins had been dominating magazine covers for years.  Not to be outdone, two Japanese manufacturers produced similarly-configured V-twins (actually, L-twins).  Honda had the SuperHawk, and Suzuki the TL1000S.  I’ve always liked Suzuki better, so I went with the TL1000s.  Suzuki offered the TL in two colors….a forest green with red accents; and bright red with yellow accents.  For me, it had to be red.

My ’97 TL1000S, somewhere in northern Baja.

I bought my TL at Bert’s in Azusa.  If I recall correctly, I negotiated the guys down to $8700 out the door, and part of that was a Yamaha 650 twin I traded in.  I had bought the Yamaha used from a guy in a course I taught at McDonnell Douglas, thinking the Yamaha would be like my old Triumph Bonnevilles but reliable.  The Yamaha was a bust. It was too heavy, it had cheap fasteners, the Hopper/Fonda riding stance was awful, it didn’t handle, and it lacked the low-end grunt of my earlier Triumphs.

I remember riding the TL home from Bert’s.  The riding was awkward with the bike’s low bars and high footpegs, but I got used to it and I made it less punishing with a set of Heli-Bars.  The Heli-Bars were slighly taller and wider (you got about an inch more in each dimension, which made a difference).

A stop for fuel in Catavina. The guys sell gasolina from bottles along Mexico Highway 1.

The TL was the fastest and hardest accelerating motorcycle I ever owned.  It would wheelie in third gear if you weren’t paying attention, and it went from zero to 100 in a heartbeat.  The bottom end torque was ferocious.  Fuel economy was atrocious, and it had a tendency to stall at low rpm.  But wow, did it ever look good.  Did I mention it was fast?

My friend Marty had an Aprilia V-twin (a Mille, I think, or something like that), another bit of Italian exotica, that cost even more than the Ducati.  Marty’s spaghetti-bender was more than twice what I paid for my TL.  We swapped bikes once on a day ride and I came away unimpressed.  My TL was faster.

Baja a few years ago.  Younger, thinner, and hair that hadn’t turned gray yet. That motorcycle made me look good.

I wanted the look of a sport bike, but I’m not a canyon racer and the exotic look didn’t do anything for me once I had ridden the TL a few times.  Then something funny happened.  My Harley died on a Baja ride.  I nursed my Harley home, parked it, and took the TL.  Surprisingly, it did a good job as a touring platform.  And I could ride at speeds the Harley couldn’t dream about.  In those days, if there were speed limits in Baja, I didn’t know about them.

That first big trip on the TL instead of the Harley cinched it for me.  I bought sportsbike soft luggage and used the TL on many rides after that.  700-mile days in Baja became the norm (I could make Mulegé in a day; the TL wouldn’t break a sweat).  The only downside was the abominable fuel economy (the fuel light would come on after 105 miles), but a one-gallon red plastic fuel container and a bungie cord fixed that.  It was Beverly hillbillies, but it worked. Not that there’s anything wrong with being a hillbilly (somebody’s got to shoot those road signs).

TL1000S touring. The bike was a surprisingly good touring machine.

Even with the TL’s mid-30-mpg fuel economy, I only ran out of fuel twice.  Once was on the Bodfish-Caliente Road (one of California’s best kept secrets).  I didn’t have my gas can with me; Marty rode ahead and returned with a gasoline-filled water bottle he hoped wouldn’t dissolve (it didn’t).  The other time was on Baja’s long stretch headed south to Guerrero Negro.  That road runs straight as an arrow, and I ran the TL at a surprisingly comfortable 145 mph (still well below the TL’s top speed).  The TL was fuel injected and when it ran dry it was like someone shut the ignition.  I poured my extra gallon in and made it to the next Pemex station.  The guys I rode with were still far behind.

I had fun with the TL, but I dropped it a lot more than any other bike I had ever owned.  All the drops were my fault.  The low-mounted sport bars restricted steering, and once when pulling into my driveway, there wasn’t enough to keep the bike upright.  Before I realized it, the bike and I were both on the ground (my first thought was to wonder if anyone had seen me).  The next time the bike was in my driveway, facing slightly downhill.  I started it to let it warm up, and the bike rolled off the sidestand.  Again, my first thought was if anyone had seen me.  The third time was more dramatic.  The TL had a slipper clutch; you could downshift with reckless abandon.  The clutch would slip and not skid the rear tire.  It was cool, until I used it diving hard into a corner.  The curb was coming up quickly and I wasn’t slowing fast enough.  The slipper clutch was doing its thing, but when I touched the front brake, that was enough to unload the rear wheel.  It broke loose and I fishtailed into the curb.  I went over the bars, executed a very clean somersault, and came to rest in the sitting position looking straight ahead.  I had been watching the Oympics on TV the day before and I remember thinking (as I completed my dismount) I could be a competitor. A woman in a station wagon saw the whole thing.  She rolled down her window and I half expected to see a sign with a 10 on it (like they do at the Olympics).  “Are you okay?” she asked.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I answered.  “I’m a gymnast and I’m practicing.”  The window went up and she disappeared.

I loved the looks of the TL.   Yeah, the carbon fiber was faux, but I didn’t care.  In those days I was running a factory that made carbon fiber aircraft stuff and I never understood the attraction.  Even with fake carbon fiber, the TL was a motorcycle that looked fast.  And it was.

Serious miles were easy on the TL1000S.

Suzuki only made the TL for a few years.  Some guy in the UK killed himself in a speed wobble, the bike got an Internet rep as a tank slapper, and that killed sales worldwide.  Suzuki had a recall to add a steering damper, but the damage had been done.  Bert’s installed the damper on my TL, I couldn’t feel any difference , and my bike never went into a wobble (either before or after the recall).  My hypothesis is that the UK guy rolled on too much throttle exiting a corner, lifting the front wheel with the bike leaned over.  That will induce a wobble, you know.  There was another recall to fix the low speed stalling issue.  I guess it worked; my bike never had a low speed stall after that.

Suzuki offered a more radical fully-faired version called the TL1000R (I didn’t like its looks), but the TL-R didn’t survive, either.  The engine, however, proved to be a winner.  Today, 25 years later, a detuned version is still soldiering on in the ADV-styled V-Strom.  I never owned a V-Strom, but I should have.  Everybody I ever talked to who owned one loved the V-Strom.  Me, I loved my TL.

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Dream Bike: Honda MT250 Elsinore

The first motorcycle that I couldn’t hold the throttle wide open through the gears was a CR250 Honda Elsinore. I was around 16 years old and had ridden other 250s: Suzukis, Yamahas, 4-stroke Hondas. They were enduro bikes with heavy flywheels and mild porting. The Elsinore was a full-on motocross bike and I had never experienced a real, racing motorcycle.

When I left the line Wide-eFfin’-Open like I normally did the front wheel was climbing into the sky and at the same time the rear tire was shooting rocks and dirt 50 feet behind. The only thing that kept it from flipping over was lack of traction. Each time I shifted gears the front wheel came off the ground and a fresh torrent of debris issued forth from the squirming back tire. It was a breathtakingly fast motorcycle.

It was so light, so powerful, the engine ran clean throughout the rev range, and the suspension was the best I had ever ridden. The steering was telepathic and the bike could fly through the air like Superman. By the time I was topped out in 4th gear the bike was starting a slow, gentle weave and the two-track dirt trail I was on had grown very narrow. I had to lift. I never even made it to top gear. What a motorcycle!

The MT250 was not like that. It was a mild-mannered bike and Honda’s first modern two-stroke street bike. In the mid 1970s street legal, 250 two-stroke enduro bikes were wildly popular. Honda made a decent but heavy 4-stroke enduro.  To compete with the other guys Honda had to lose the valve train and build one of those confounded “Thinking Man’s” engines. Honda building a two stroke street bike was earthshaking news in the 1970’s motorcycle world.  It stirred up passionate opinions, like when Bob Dylan went electric.

The MT250 looked a lot like a real Elsinore except it had gauges, lights and blinkers. The gas tank was steel instead of artificially aged aluminum. The frame was regular steel not chrome-moly like the race bike. It even mixed the oil and gasoline automatically like Yamaha’s Autolube. All these changes added weight but you could get a plate for the thing and ride it to high school.

If my memory has not failed completely I remember the motorcycle magazines of that era being slightly disappointed with the new two-stroke Honda. How could such a milquetoast motorcycle come from the fire-breathing CR250 Elsinore? I guess they were expecting a motocross bike with lights. Eventually one of the magazines did just that. Here again, I may be imagining this but I seem to remember one of the magazines putting a CR250 top end on a MT250. And that was all it took. The heavy flywheel with the CR porting made for a fast, powerful 250 that wasn’t so abrupt that it would spit you off.

I loved the style of the first CR250s and there hasn’t been a better-looking dirt bike built. I’ll go even further: the early CR250 is one of the all-time best-looking motorcycles of any category since forever. The MT inherited a lot of the CR’s style and it flat looks great. The engine was a strange-but-cool, dark brown color and the exhaust pipe swooped banana-like along the right side of the bike.

“If you like the CR250 so much why don’t you just get one?” you may ask. Here’s the reason: the CR250 is a race bike, it’s an old race bike, but it’s still a race bike and fast as hell. I don’t need that kind of pressure at this stage of my life. The MT250 has all the style with none of the fear. I can ride the MT on the street to get to the trails; no need to load it into a truck. Hell, you could ride the MT across country if you wanted to.

Honda’s MT250 never really took off and their low-ish used prices reflect that milquetoast reputation. You can pick up a perfect one for $2500 and a decent daily rider for under $1500. Not counting the very first bikes they built, Honda didn’t make many two-stroke street bikes. There was the MT125 and the NSR 400cc three-cylinder pocket rocket; no others come to mind. Were there any others?

My dream garage would not be complete without an MT250. It’s a bike I could ride around back country trails without fear of breaking down or flipping over backwards. The thing is as reliable as a Honda. While I’m dreaming I’ll think of the CR250’s incredible acceleration and just green-screen that vivid memory onto the background as I putt-putt down to the ice cream store for a fudge sundae.

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Hasty Conclusions: The New BSA 650 Gold Star

There’s not a lot of Internet noise on the revivified BSA motorcycle company and I don’t see any reason why ExhaustNotes.us shouldn’t try and create some buzz with wild speculation of our own. We haven’t got a test bike and if we did we’d be riding the wheels off the thing so we’ll just imagine we have a BSA to examine. If you haven’t learned by now not to trust things you read on the Internet then there’s really no hope for you and you can take everything I say in this review as gospel.

In the US market BSA is re-entering the motorcycle business at a bad time. Our customer demographic for street motorcycle riders becomes older by the minute. 1950’s-1960’s nostalgia-driven motorcycle sales simply must die off with the customers that lived that stifling, bland era. In just a few seconds I was able to gin up a statistic that said the average age for motorcyclists in America is 73 years old. That number shocked me even though I knew it was false because I was the one that made it up. Soon enough I came to believe that number because it was on the Internet in this ExhaustNotes.us story.

In the video below new-BSA’s Indian owners appear to realize the American market is awash with nostalgic motorcycle choices and don’t seem to be in any rush to lose money chasing the urine soaked, grey-haired, pony-tailed, ancient American rider even though that dried up shell of a man would appear to be the natural audience for such a bike.

The motorcycle might be built in Britain, but most likely will be made in India with a steadying British hand on the design choices. BSA has really nailed the look. The new 650 is as close to the old Gold Star style-wise as you can get without having survived the bombing of Coventry. To me, the bike looks great and is so much classier than the swoopy, exo-framed modern bike. BSA even made the engine clatter like an old British single even though it’s a liquid-cooled, double overhead cam, 4-valve engine. I looked on BSA’s website to see of it was fuel–injected but didn’t see that spec. I’m sure it is. Claimed compression ratio is 11.5:1 so hopefully the combustion chamber is shaped well enough to use regular unleaded gas. Finding high-octane gas is a problem out in the hinterlands.

The claimed 45 horsepower BSA thumper comes with all the modern conveniences like ABS, headlights, turn indicators and a hose bib for a washing machine. The bike is also equipped with a 23,000-watt inverter allowing the rider to power a typical suburban home for up to 5 days. The bike is fairly lightweight compared to your average adventure motorcycle clocking in at only 33-1/2 stone. One disc brake on each wheel should stop the light-ish BSA fairly well and with a claimed 70 miles-per-1024 dram you should be able to go roughly 210 miles on the 3240-dram tank. Of course, your mileage may vary depending of which rose-colored glasses you are wearing at the time.

BSA’s website doesn’t mention a counter balancer but one of the guys in the video says it has one so I predict a tolerable vibration level even with that big slug flying around between your legs. Traditional telescopic forks and two rear shocks are nothing earth shaking. I like simple things so I’m good with boring old suspenders. Spoke rims and what looks like tube-type tires are all well-trod design choices that leave plenty of space for improvements on subsequent model years.

As it should, my opinion means nothing to you but I like the new BSA. It looks right, and it has the bare minimum modern junk bolted on. I’ll go as far as saying it’s an honest motorcycle. The only thing wrong is the price. Even with the collapsing British pound, 10,000 British pounds is over $11,000 US dollars and that’s almost twice what Royal Enfield’s 650 twin sells for, a bike that is every bit as cool and most likely better. The Enfield even wins AFT flat track races. I won’t be buying one but don’t let that stop you from buying one.

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Dan’s Drifter

Good buddy Dan, a loyal ExNotes reader, enjoyed our recent blog on the Kawasaki Drifter.  Dan wrote to tell us about his Drifter.  Check this out, folks.  It’s a beautiful motorcycle.

Joe:

My motorcycle is a 1999 Kawasaki Drifter 1500cc.  Recently got it, love the combination of  Japanese bike reliability that will go forever and the Indian style that is a real head turner. Changed up the seat, added some Indian badging including the tank decals and even an Indian VIN plate cover. Other adds on include the jockey shift that is actually linked to the heel toe shift, the book rack and the triple head lights. I couldn’t afford a 40s Indian and even if I could some of those you have to be a mechanic to operate, this is a great compromise that doesn’t feel like a compromise.

I think people who appreciate the bike for what it is might like the look of the seat and such. It’s funny as a tribute I was even on the fence about the Indian badging but at the end of the day I subscribe to “ride whatever, be safe, have fun.”  I even had a rider of a current Indian tell me his was no more Indian than mine…they stopped making them in ’53 and as far as he was concerned anything after that was nothing more than a tribute.

Thanks and be well…I enjoy the blog.

Dan

Thank you, Dan.  Your Drifter is a good-looking motorcycle and it’s one I’d be proud to ride.  Great photos, too!

The 2020 Katana

It’s not every day you get to see a new 2020 Suzuki Katana for the first time, and it’s certainly not every day you get living legend and motojournalist extraordinaire Kevin Duke to take a photo of you standing next to it.  Yesterday was that day for me, and the photo you see above was a shot Kevin grabbed of yours truly with the new Katana.  I was visiting with the boys at CSC Motorcycles, Kevin was there, and he volunteered to let me take a ride on the Katana.  I took a pass on that, but when he asked me to pose with the bike, hey, I figured Suzuki needs all the help they can get.  Not that they need any from me.  The new Katana is a stunning motorcycle.  Visually arresting, I would call it.

We wrote about the 2020 Katana in our Dream Bikes series last year, and at that time, I mentioned that I owned one of the original Katanas in 1982.  Mine was Serial Number 241 of the first batch of 500 Suzuki built.

There’s 38 years between those two photos.   Wow, that’s a scary thought.  I think me and my good buddy Jack Daniel’s will have a talk about that later tonight.

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Dream Bike: Honda CBX

I’d always wanted a CBX, ever since they were introduced by Honda in 1979.  I bought a new Honda 750 Four when that bike first came out, and the CBX seemed a logical extension of the kind of engineering pioneered by the Honda 750.  It was engineering excess raised to an exponent, the CBX was, I was a guy in my 20s, and in those days, dealers would let you take a bike out for a test ride.  I’m the kind of guy that caused them to stop doing that.  I lived in Fort Worth, the Honda dealer there gave me the keys to a new silver CBX with less than 20 miles on the odometer, and I tried to bury the needle on Loop 820 back in ’79.  As I recall, I touched something north of 140 miles per hour, and when I returned to the dealer and put the bike on its sidestand, the cam covers were ejaculating oil.   The bike’s honey-colored lifeblood was squirting out in an almost arterial fashion.

“What do you think?” the sales guy asked, hoping for a quick sale.

“It’s not for me,” I answered.  “I mean, look at the thing…it leaks oil worse than my Harley.”

Still, I wanted a CBX.  Always did, and in ’92, I finally scratched that itch.

The mighty Six.  My old 1982 Honda CBX.  Those film cameras that I had 30 years ago did a nice job, and this photo brings back memories of one my more memorable motorcycles.

I bought the CBX you see above in 1992 (when it was already 10 years old), but the bike only had 4500 miles on it and it was in pristine condition. The price was $4500, perfectly matching the odometer mileage. Everything was stock, and everything was in perfect shape (other than the tires, which were cracking with age).

I must have gone back to Bert’s dealership in Azusa four times drooling over that bike, and when I finally made up my mind to buy it and went back for a fifth time, it was gone.  I’d lost my opportunity.  Ah, well, I could bounce around for a while longer on my Harley.  It was a different Harley than the one I mentioned above.   That earlier one was a ’79 Electra-Glide and I called it my optical illusion because it looked like a motorcycle.  The Harley I owned when I bought the ’82 CBX was a ’92 Softail, but that one was a real motorcycle.  You could ride it without things breaking.

Bert’s was a magnet to me, and lots of times after work I’d stop there just to look at the motorcycles. The place was like an art gallery.  I just enjoyed being there and taking it all in.  Motorcycles can be art, you know.   That bit of art that I had fallen in love with, the pearlescent white ’82 CBX, was gone.  I had let it escape.

So, you can imagine my surprise a month or two later when I stopped in again and the CBX was back on the floor. The bike had been sold to a Japanese collector, I was told, and the deal fell through.  Opportunity didn’t need to knock twice. I bought the CBX on the spot.

The CBX was an amazing motorcycle. 1050cc. Six cylinders. Six carbs. 24 valves. Double overhead cams. Actually, it was quadruple overhead cams. The cylinder head was so long each cam was split in two, and the two halves were joined in the middle of their vast reach across those six cylinders by what engineers call Oldham couplers.  I didn’t know exactly what an Oldham coupler was or how it worked, but it sounded cool.  I owned a motorcycle with Oldham couplers.  How many people can say that?

The CBX didn’t have much bottom end, but once the engine got going, the thing was amazing.  And the sound!  Wow!  It sounded like a Formula 1 race car.  I read somewhere that the Japanese engineers actually spent time on a US aircraft carrier listening to fighter jets take off, and their objective was to make the CBX sound like that. When conditions were right, I convinced myself I could hear the F-14 in my CBX.  Top Gun.  Maverick.   That was me.

The CBX was fun, and it drew looks wherever I rode it. Honda only made the CBX for 4 years (1979 through 1982). They were expensive to manufacture (it seemed like every fastener on the thing was a custom design) and they didn’t sell all that well. But it was an awesome display of technology. I’m a mechanical engineer, and the design spoke to me.

I never had any regrets with that old CBX. I rode it hard for the next 10 years, and other than dropping it a couple of times in 0-mph mishaps, it served me well. I rode it all over the Southwest and it never missed a beat. When I first bought it, I could walk into any Honda dealer and buy new parts (even though it was 10 years old).  Ten years later (when the bike was 20 years old) that was no longer the case, and that scared me. The CBX was years ahead of its time and it was complicated. If something broke and I couldn’t find parts, I’d have a $4500 paperweight.

In those days, I was on a CBX Internet mailing list. I put a note on the list advising folks that I wanted to sell the bike and it sold that day. I got a fair price for it, and the mighty Six was gone.  I have no regrets, folks…I had lots of fun and it was time to move on.    But I miss that bike.  It was fun, it was fast, it was different, and it was everything a motorcycle should be.

Dream Bike: Buell XB12s

Joe Gresh posted a Dream Bike blog the other day about the Buells and I think he was spot on.  A confession:  I’ve always wanted a Buell, too.  Given the choice, I’d probably go for the XB12s like you see in the photo above.  I didn’t much care for the ones at the end of the run with the Rotax engines (apparently, neither did Harley-Davidson), and I didn’t like the ones with the lower bars and the bigger (yet still small) front fairing (the lines just didn’t look right to me).  But that XB12s:  Wow.  I think Buell nailed what a hooligan bike should look like, and Bike Looks Matter (I could start a movement under that name, I think).

Buell had versions of the XB12 with translucent body work (the fairing and the tank) in orange, red, and smoky gray, and those are muey cool, too.  I particularly liked the orange one.  Orange has always worked for me on a motorcycle.  Orange bikes are faster, you know.

I went as far as riding out to Victorville Harley about 15 years ago to test ride a new Buell, and that’s what scotched the deal for me.  I had the money and I was ready to buy.  The bike was beautiful, but it was slow compared to my Speed Triple and the wheelbase was so short it felt twitchy to me.  Maybe it was the steering geometry.  Whatever it was, the bike just didn’t feel stable.

The handling wasn’t what killed the deal, though.  It was summer when I test rode that Buell and when we were stuck in traffic along Bear Valley Road, I suddenly heard this horrific whine from beneath the seat.  The noise startled me.  I thought something broke, but it was the rear cylinder fan (something I didn’t even know the bike had).  Evidently the Buells ran hot (as did the Big Twin Harleys) and they had a problem with rear cylinder overheating.  The answer was a thermostat-activated rear cylinder fan.  Nope, that was too Mickey Mouse for me, and I kept the $12,000 in my wallet that day.

But the looks!  Wow, those Buell boys nailed what I thought were fine aesthetics for a motorcycle.  And the Exhaust Note was perfect.  Nothing sounds better than a Buell at idle.  It was locomotive like:  Big, powerful, industrial, all business.  I liked that, too.

As a mechanical engineer, I appreciated Buell’s concepts…the oil in the swingarm, the fuel in the frame, the oversized single disk front brake, and the whole mass centralization thing.  These were ideas that made sense and were ahead of their time.  Maybe that’s why Buell didn’t make it.  There were other reasons, but sometimes you can be too far ahead of the curve, and Buells were out there.

Gresh said he liked the earlier Buells better, and even though I’d like to someday own a later model Buell, I agree with Joe that the earlier ones were also beautiful.   Buell had an earlier gray and orange color combo that I thought was especially stunning…

I think the earlier Buells didn’t have the rear cylinder cooling fan and I like that.  The fact that Buells were slow compared to Triumphs doesn’t bother me these days.  I think I could put up with the noisy cooling fan silliness.  Or maybe I’d just ride on cooler days, or stay out of traffic.  I’ve found myself poking around a lot on CycleTrader and the Facebook sales pages recently.   Who knows what the future holds.

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Dream Bikes: Buell M2 Cyclone

I like all the Buell models and the Buell M2 Cyclone is my favorite Buell of the bunch. I mean to have one before I shuffle off this mortal torsion. Unlike most of the motorcycles I want to own, this is one Dream Bike that is very affordable. Even an Internet blogger wannabe can pick up a running, low mileage copy for a couple thousand bucks. And if I ever get a couple thousand bucks ahead I’ll get one.

The M2 was manufactured in that brief window of history before Erik Buell went totally crazy. After the M2 Buell started mixing up all the traditional systems on a motorcycle just to show you that he could. Yeah, it worked but the motorcycling public wasn’t ready for inside-out brakes and aluminum frames full of gasoline.

The frame on the M2 is plain old steel tubing with a sturdy rear sub-frame that can support a passenger or luggage. The value of a sturdy sub-frame was made apparent to me on a recent trip to Bonneville, Utah. The swaying luggage on my pencil-necked Husqvarna 500 frame was nerve wracking. Similar to an old Norton, the M2 frame isolates all the motorcycle parts a rider comes in contact with from the shaking, quaking Sportster engine. That feature comes in handy on a long trip.

Steel is relatively easy to bend and weld. Even the most basic repair shop will have a set of 0xy-acetylene torches that can fix anything on the M2’s frame. I also like the standard gas tank position and conventional forks. I don’t road race on the street so the added stiffness of a cool, upside-down front end is wasted on a peon like me.

The engine on the M2 is a hot-rodded 1200cc Sportster putting out around 90 horsepower. 90 horsepower is a lot of go-go from a half-century-old design that puttered along at 50 horsepower for decades. Just getting a new 883 Sportster engine up to the 90 horsepower level would cost more than an entire Buell! Later, crazier Buells had even more power and more Buell-specific engine parts while still being based on the Sportster. Buell even used, God forbid, Rotax engines! I can see parts for those engines becoming scarce within the 100-year time frame I like to operate. No such problems with the M2 engine as it’s mostly plain-old-plain-old and parts for the Harley-Davidson Sportster engine will be available on into the next millennia.

The M2’s styling has hints of Buell’s Blast but it looks good to me. I like a standard-style motorcycle, one that can go from touring bike to trail machine with only the removal of a few bungee cords. It’s a model I keep a weather eye on in case a steal of a deal pops up on one of the Internet for-sale sites. And yellow is the fastest color.

Such a deal!

The year was 1991, and the last thing in the world I was thinking about was buying another motorcycle, and within the confines of that thought, the very, very last thought I would have ever had was buying a Harley-Davidson. I had previously owned a ’79 Electra-Glide I bought new in Texas, and that bike was a beautiful disaster. I called it my optical illusion (it looked like a motorcycle).  I wrote about the bad taste it left in an earlier blog. Nope, I’d never own another Harley, or so I thought when I sold it in 1981.

My ’79 Electra-Glide Classic, as shown in the 1979 Harley catalog. It was the most unreliable and most beautiful motorcycle I ever owned. I wish I still had it.

But like the title of that James Bond movie, you should never say never again. I was a big wheel at an aerospace company in 1991 and I was interviewing engineers when good buddy Dick Scott waltzed in as one of the applicants. I had worked with Dick in another aerospace company (in those days in the So Cal aerospace industry, everybody worked everywhere at one time or another). Dick had the job as soon as he I saw he was applying, but I went through the motions interviewing him and I learned he had a Harley. DIck said they were a lot better than they used to be and he gave me the keys to his ’89 Electra-Glide. I rode it and he was right. It felt solid and handled way better than my old Shovelhead.

Dick Scott on his ’89 Electra-Glide. The day after I took this photo in Baja, Dick died when he crashed his motorcycle.

That set me on a quest. I started looking, and after considering the current slate of Harleys in 1991, I decided that what I needed was a Heritage Softail. I liked the look and I thought I wanted the two-tone turquoise-and-white version. The problem, though, was that none of the Harley dealers had motorcycles. They were all sold before they arrived at the dealers, and the dealers were doing their gouging in those days with a “market adjustment” uptick ranging from $2000 to sometimes $4000 (today, most non-Harley dealers sort of do the same thing with freight and setup). There was no way in hell I was going to pay over list price, but even had I wanted to, it would have been a long wait to get a new Harley.

One day while driving to work, a guy passed me on the freeway riding a sapphire blue Heritage softail, and I was smitten. Those colors worked even better for me than did the turquoise-and-white color combo. The turquoise-and-white had a nice ‘50s nostalgia buzz (it reminded me of a ’55 Chevy Bel Air), but that sapphire blue number was slick. Even early in the morning on Interstate 10, I could see the orange and gray factory pinstriping, and man, it just worked for me. It had kind of a blue jeans look to it (you know, denim with orange stitching).  That was my new want and I wanted the thing bad. But it didn’t make any difference. Nobody had any new Harleys, and nobody had them at list price. I might as well have wanted a date with Michelle Pfeiffer. In those days, a new Harley at list price or less in the colors I wanted (or in any colors, actually) was pure unobtanium.

The Harley Softail I bought at Dale’s Modern Harley. I negotiated a hell of a deal. I kept that Harley for 12 years and rode the wheels off the thing.  I’ve since learned how to pack a little better.

So one Saturday morning about a month later, I took a drive out to the Harley dealer in San Bernardino. In those days, that dealer was Dale’s Modern Harley (an oxymoronic name for a Harley dealer if ever there was one). Dale’s is no more, but when it was there, it was the last of the real motorcycle shops. You know the drill…it was in a bad part of town, it was small, everything had grease and oil stains, and the only thing “modern” was the name on the sign. That’s what motorcycle dealers were like when I was growing up. I liked it that way, and truth be told, I miss it.  Dealerships are too clean today.

Anyway, a surprise awaited. I walked in the front door (which was at the rear of the building because the door facing the street was chained shut because, you know, it was a bad part of town).  And wow, there it was: A brand new 1992 Heritage Softail in sapphire blue.  Just like I wanted.

Dale’s had a sales guy who came out of Central Casting for old Harley guys. His name was Bob (I never met Dale and I have no idea who he was).  Bob.  You know the type and if you’re old enough you know the look. Old, a beer belly, a dirty white t-shirt, jeans, engineer boots, a blue denim vest, and one of those boat captain hats motorcycle riders wore in the ‘40s and ‘50s. An unlit cigarette dangled from one corner of his mouth. His belt was a chromed motorcycle chain. I’d been to Dale’s several times before, and I’d never seen Bob attired in anything but what I just described. And I’d never seen him without that unlit cigarette.  Straight out of Central Casting, like I said.

“What’s this?” I asked Bob, pointing at the blue Softail.

“Deal fell through,” Bob answered. “Guy ordered it, we couldn’t get him financing, and he couldn’t get a loan anywhere else.”

“So it’s available?” I asked.

“Yep.”

Hmmm. This was interesting.

“How much?” I asked.

“$12,995, plus tax and doc fees,” Bob answered, walking back to his desk at the edge of Dale’s very small showroom floor.

$12,995 was MSRP for a new Heritage Softail back in 1992. That would be a hell of a deal. Nobody else in So Cal was selling Harleys at list price.

I followed Bob to his desk and sat down.  I was facing Bob and the Harley was behind me. Bob was screwing around with some papers on his desk and not paying any particular attention to me.

“I’ll go $11,500 for it,” I said.

Bob looked up from his paperwork and smiled.

“Son,” he said (and yeah, he actually called me “son,” even though I was 40 years old at the time) “I’m going to sell that motorsickle this morning.  Not this afternoon, not next week, but this morning.  The only question is: Am I going to sell it to you or am I going to sell it to him?”

Bob actually said “motorsickle,” I thought, and then I wondered who “him” was. Bob sensed my befuddlement.  He pointed behind me and I looked. Somebody was already sitting on what I had started regarding as my motorsickle.  That guy was thinking the same thing I was.

“Bob,” I began, “you gotta help me out here. I never paid retail for anything in my life.”

“That’s because you never bought a new ’92 Harley, son, but I’ll tell you what. I’ll throw in a free Harley T-shirt.”  I couldn’t tell if he was joking or if he was trying to insult me, but I didn’t care.

I looked at the Harley again and that other dude was still sitting on it.   On my motorcycle.   And that’s when I made up my mind. $12,995 later (plus another thousand dollars in taxes and doc fees) I rolled out of Dale’s with a brand-new sapphire blue Harley Heritage Softail. And one new Harley T-shirt.